Memory Mixtape #31: The 15 Fame-Filled Minutes Of The Fanzine Writer

The Boomtown Rats - Fanzine Hero

Continued from yesterday's post... when I was about 16 or 17, I was invited to join an APA. I had no idea what an APA was and the internet wasn't around to explain like it is nowadays.

You Am I - Bitter Young Man Of The Franzine Press

Iffypedia tells us...

"An amateur press association is a group of people who produce individual pages or zines that are sent to a Central Mailer for collation and distribution to all members of the group."

Initially I was just writing individual pages for a zine called Comic Critics Cavalcade, in which letter-hacks from all over the world could share their thoughts on new or old comics or the changing face of the industry. 

Emma Pollock - Letters To Strangers

After a year or two doing that, I was allowed into the inner circle: Inertron, an APA in which a small group of British comic fans made their own zines every couple of months, photocopied a batch, and sent them off to a central mailer for distribution to the rest of the group.

Fanzines are cheap, I know

Shape your mind

The Replacements - Sixteen Blue [Outtake - Alternate Vocal]

A week or so later, we'd receive a huge parcel containing every else's zines which we then read and commented on. Some of those zines were huge (for anyone who thinks writing this blog must be a time-consuming affair, it's nothing to the amount of time involved in being part of an APA). Yet it was also a lot of geeky fun... otherwise else why did we spend so much time on it? 

Aztec Camera - We Could Send Letters

Not everyone involved was a teenager like me - some of the other contributors were in their 20s, 30s or even older... but nobody thought there was anything odd about that. We were united by our shared love of comics... but also, films, music, TV shows, and life as we knew it. Nobody agreed on everything, but nobody violently disagreed either. We were interested, rather than angry, when someone liked different things to us. Being a part of that group was a natural precursor to the blogosphere - or this comfortable little corner of the blogosphere anyway. 

Kings Of Convenience - The Weight Of My Words

I recently found all my old APAs up in my mum's attic, and I'm in the process of scanning them to digital files for posterity. Below is the cover to the first issue of my zine Rock n Roll, named after the sign off line I used for all my fan letters. At the top of the post is a cover from a later edition. Even though this was an APA for comics fans, we could write about whatever we wanted in our own zines, so music was a big part of my witterings even back then. 

Wilco - Box Full Of Letters

Until I found that dusty old box up in mum's attic, I hadn't thought about my time in the APA group for maybe a quarter of a century. I'm not sure why it stopped, but I suspect it was partly that the internet took over. I did find myself quite active in online comics groups from the mid-late 90s, and I suspect quite a few of my fellow APA-ers made a similar leap. I was also spending more and more time producing my own comics by then (not to mention completing my English degree and working in radio) so something had to give. I miss the creativity and community of it all, but other things came along to fill that hole... like writing this blog. I guess I've always felt the need to put my thoughts down and have them read by others, all that's changed is the medium.

In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear

Is the sound of someone stacking chairs

And mopping up spilt beer

And someone asking questions and basking in the light

Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer